Molly Ringwald concerned over teen pregnancy projects

Actress Molly Ringwald fears her film and TV roles have helped glamorise teen pregnancy. The Pretty in Pink star famously played a a high school senior who falls pregnant in 1988’s For Keeps?, and recently played Shailene Woodley’s onscreen mother in U.S. TV series The Secret Life of the American Teenager, about a youngster who tries to cope with her unexpected baby news.
Ringwald admits the projects were not as gritty and realistic as she had hoped, and fears they may have unintentionally encouraged young girls to start a family prematurely.
She tells New York Magazine, “I feel like… (For Keeps?) glamorised teen pregnancy. And the original script that I’d agreed to do did not. But whenever you do a movie, whenever you do anything, it’s a collaborative effort, and sometimes the script that you agree to do turns into something else. And I was pretty much a teenager at the time, and it was this runaway train that I didn’t know how to stop. And so I was very unhappy about that, and I felt like the movie was, I won’t say unfairly criticised, because I agreed. I really did feel like it glamorised teen pregnancy.
“And then I did this series (The Secret Life of the American Teenager), and in the beginning I didn’t feel like the series glamorised teen pregnancy, but then I felt like it ended up doing the same thing. So I feel like I have yet to be involved in a project that shows what it’s really like (to be a teen mother). They (producers) always seem to end up glamorising it. And I guess when you have a movie star playing the teenager, it’s a temptation to make them look like a young movie star – I did it, and then Shailene. But, yeah, I feel like, unfortunately, both of them do kind of glamorise teen pregnancy.”